In recent years, along with an increase in elderly people, progress of advanced medicine, immunodeficiency of late stage cancer patients and the like, infections with fungi have been increasing. These infections provide serious effects, often causing death. Since there are not many kinds of existing antifungal agents, and their toxicity is high, the mother nucleus of a new antifungal agent, which is different from that of conventional medicaments, has been desired. In addition, since the use of antifungal agents causes increased emergence of resistant bacteria, the development of a new medicament has been earnestly desired. While candin-based antifungal agents show low toxicity, since the molecular weight thereof is large, reactivity with serum poses problems. Azole-based antifungal agents have a problem in that administration at a high concentration is difficult in view of the toxicity thereof. Therefore, an effective, low-molecular-weight compound showing low reactivity with serum and low toxicity has been strongly desired.
Conventionally, in search of a pharmaceutical product seed compound from microbial metabolites, terrestrial separation sources have been mainly harvested and subjected to microorganism separation. The microbial metabolites found to date include penicillin and adriamycin, and a number of antibiotics and anticancer agents were found and utilized as therapeutic drugs for infection, cancer and the like. However, due to the continuous search over a long term, microbial metabolites obtained from the land areas are mostly known compounds, and a secondary metabolite to be a candidate for a novel medicament is extremely difficult to obtain. Consequently, the development of a novel medicament by natural substance drug discovery corporations was rapidly reduced. To overcome the situation, screening using a chemical library (natural substance and synthesized compound) has been conducted on a global scale. Unexpectedly, however, a promising novel medicament candidate compound was not obtained from the chemical library. Under such circumstances, it is extremely difficult to obtain a new medicament candidate compound.
In view of the aforementioned current situation in the search of a novel medicament candidate compound, the marine microorganism resources have drawing attention. Marine microorganism resources have been scarcely utilized, and have a high possibility of affording a novel secondary metabolite.
Recently, a new compound represented by the following formula:
which was found from a microorganism collected from the seabed sand around the Kakeroma island of Kagoshima Prefecture, Amami Islands, was named “Kakeromycin”. The “kakeromycin” shows an antifungal activity, particularly, a strong antibacterial activity against pathogens of candidiasis, highly possibly shows a new antibacterial action different from those of existing antifungal agents, and further research and development in the future is expected. In addition, since the “kakeromycin” shows cytotoxicity to HepG2 liver cancer cell and PANC-1 pancreas cancer cell, its development as an anticancer agent is expected.